On Keystone pipeline, President Obama may be ‘headed toward yes’

President Barack Obama’s latest critique of the Keystone XL oil pipeline still leaves a path for approving the project — but its supporters may need to make concessions to blunt its impact on the climate, analysts said Monday.

Obama’s remarks to The New York Times echoed some of the most potent criticisms offered by Keystone’s opponents, scoffing at GOP claims about job creation and warning that the pipeline might even raise gasoline prices. He also said Canada “could potentially be doing more” to counteract the greenhouse gas emissions being unleashed from Alberta’s oil sands, the major reason for climate activists’ outrage at the pipeline.

“That could be a signal that the administration would welcome a concrete plan from the Canadians about how to reduce the carbon intensity of the oil sands crude,” said Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. He said Obama’s comments, published Saturday in the Times, “Almost sounded like an invitation to the Canadians to offer concrete commitments to make their oil no more carbon-intensive than conventional crude, like he was asking the Canadians to help him find his way to yes.”

Kevin Book, a longtime policy expert at ClearView Energy Partners, also saw a message to the Canadian government and Keystone developer TransCanada — cryptic though it may seem — in the comments.

“Arguably, what came out at the Times was a clue,” Book said. “And the clue says build more green capacity, TransCanada; do something to offset your emissions profile, TransCanada. That perspective, which is one we actually hold, means he is headed toward yes, and he’s looking for defensible ways to support yes.”

Then again, Book said, “President Obama has a gift for saying things that can be interpreted by different people different ways.”

Obama followed the same pattern last month in a climate speech at Georgetown University, saying he would oppose the pipeline if it would “significantly” increase greenhouse gas emissions. His comments led both the pro- and anti-Keystone camps to claim the president had sided with them, although Book said that depends “on how one defines the word ‘significant’ — either ‘inconsequential’ or ‘impossibly high.’”

On the other hand, some longtime watchers of U.S. energy policy said Obama’s latest remarks leave them newly baffled about where the administration’s Keystone decision will land.

“I just never know where the president on a given day is coming out on this,” Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at The Brookings Institution, told POLITICO. “I’m dumbfounded, quite honestly.”

Ebinger has long predicted that the president will approve the pipeline, but in light of the Times interview, “I’ve kind of done an about-face,” he said. “I think the president is very concerned about losing his environmental constituency going into the 2014 election season. I’m just not sure he’s really convinced we need [Keystone].”

In the Times interview, Obama poked holes in Republican claims that the pipeline will create tens of thousands of jobs, echoing remarks he made in closed-door meetings with lawmakers in March.

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator. There is no evidence that that’s true,” the president told the Times, asserting that Keystone will create about 2,000 construction jobs and about 50 to 100 permanent jobs once the pipeline is finished. A State Department draft report released in March estimated that after the pipeline’s northern segment from Nebraska to Oklahoma is complete, operating and maintaining it will support only 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs.

“That is a blip relative to the need,” Obama said.

The president also said the crude oil the pipeline carries will end up being sold on world markets after it’s refined in Texas — a longtime argument of Keystone’s opponents.

“So it does not bring down gas prices here in the United States,” Obama said. “In fact, it might actually cause some gas prices in the Midwest to go up where currently they can’t ship some of that oil to world markets.”